After another three hours plus of a continuation of a special meeting, on February 23, Stevensville School Board members were unable to break their deadlock over the issue of masks, so the decision defaulted to a mask requirement made by the superintendent. The item was placed on the agenda following Gov. Gianforte’s rescinding of the former governor’s mandate. Gianforte left the decision up to local jurisdictions, including school districts.
Following the first session of the special meeting, at which the school board was unable to come to agreement on a mask decision, the superintendent, Dr. Bob Moore, was directed to administer a survey to all students, staff and parents to find out their opinions on mask wearing. There were 1509 responses, with 522 supporting a mask requirement and 987 supporting optional masks.
During public comment, Tammy Johnson, a high school math teacher in the district for 38 years, said, “I’m not convinced any of you are going to change your mind… Some people listen to the experts and respect their opinions and others disregard it… I’m very disheartened along with my colleagues that you are entertaining a mask decision based on a survey.” She said it’s the board’s responsibility to provide a safe and healthy working environment, and it seemed to her that no one was thinking about the most vulnerable populations of the school – the staff, support staff and administration. She said that students are not actually required to wear masks because they have the option to learn online. “The teachers don’t have that choice,” said Johnson. “If you’re going to lift the mask mandate, let teachers decide whether students have to wear a mask in their classroom.”
After hours of public comment, board members weighed in again. Nick Gerhard suggested giving all the teachers N95 masks. Dr. Moore responded that he did not know if the district had access to enough of those and would have to look into it.
Sean Lenahan said he understood the importance of public safety and personal choice. He said he wanted to clarify that the survey was just another tool to help the board make its decision, but that doesn’t mean that the decision was being left up to the children. He asked everyone to “consider all sides of the argument and weigh them dispassionately.”
Kris McKoy said after hearing all the comments, he thought it was important to trust the medical experts. “The masks help… it’s what’s best for all of our students. At the end of the day, we have to follow the experts in this.”
Ben Meyer said he had researched what school board trustees are mandated to do by law in Title 20 of Montana Code Annotated. He said none of the 30 items listed apply to “overriding or playing the role of health manager… what we can do, and should do, by state law, is keep the doors open and make sure the students walking through those doors are educated… I get that there are different ways to see things. But that’s not what’s in the law. We’re here to educate all the kids. In the second semester we saw a huge uptick in students coming back to school after distance learning even though they had to wear a mask.” He also said that a student can get an exemption from their doctor if they cannot wear a mask for health reasons. “They can attend,” said Meyer. “They are exempt and they are in school. We are doing right by the students that can’t wear one of these and we have to do right by the students that can.”
Sarah Armijo said she did not support the idea of teachers making a mask decision for their individual classrooms. She said it should be a board decision. She said she had a hard time with the discussion being focused only on masks, since there were many other mitigations in place. She suggested resources could be focused on the most vulnerable population, instead of the entire population, for example providing N95 masks to the staff. “I don’t think masking everyone is being fair to everyone,” she said. “We cannot discriminate against the families that don’t want to wear masks and we can’t discriminate against families that do want to wear masks.”
If two teachers have to go home due to exposure, said Michelle Fauth, that greatly affects the students’ education. “That’s 25 kids per staff member whose education level has changed and not in a positive way. And then there’s less impactful educators in the building to be connecting with our kids. That’s affecting them negatively. I can’t imagine that out of 143 staff members, there will only be two. It’s going to be five, it’s going to be 10, let alone the kids who choose to stay home because their parents don’t feel that they’re safe. And that’s a lot.”
“I strongly encourage everyone,” said Lenahan, “to look at the school districts who have made these masks optional. I think you’re going to be very surprised to see that there is not a mass exodus, that they are keeping their staffing levels up, and that they’re not having substitute crises” or an increase in cases. “We have to be very careful that we’re looking at objective data.”
“We’re missing the point that this is a public health crisis,” said Meyer. “I appreciate the notion of compromise [distributing N95 masks to teachers] but it doesn’t get us to our end goal. The notion that we don’t tell kids what to do with their personal decisions is incorrect because we have a history of telling kids what they can and can’t do in our school. We are filled with rules about what our students can’t do because of the effect that has on others. There is precedent.” Meyer said the question that should have been asked on the survey is, “If you as a student engaged in an action that meant that another student had to leave school, would you change your action?”
“What more can we do,” said Armijo. “Maybe there’s more with social distancing. Any ideas?”
“The hard part about it is it’s not exact,” said McKoy. He said the tools they have now – masks and social distancing – are not perfect. “We want to protect all the teachers, we want to protect the kids that have vulnerable parents and grandparents. We have masks and distancing. That’s all we have until we get a vaccination. We’re almost there.”
“We have been open for six months,” said Cook. “We’ve had masks for staff and students on school grounds. Yes, we have had some cases, but we have been able to stay open. I just see if we change to optional, we’re jeopardizing the last 60 days of our school year.”
In the end, the board voted on a motion by Meyer to continue requiring masks through the end of the school year or when Ravalli County public health officials announced that the vulnerable population had had the opportunity to be vaccinated. The vote was 4-4, with Cook, Fauth, McKoy and Meyer voting in favor and Armijo, Billy Donaldson, Gerhard and Lenahan voting against.
Because the board couldn’t come to a decision, just as at the previous meeting, the directive to require masks that was put in place by the superintendent last fall remains in effect.
Victoria Howell can be contacted at victoriahowell53@gmail.com or (406)207-8793.